virtualbox.org

Hi there,
While investigating another bug report, I tried booting my WinXP VM with the CD assigned to the host and with pass-through enabled. The CD drive is empty. The typical 25-30 sec until the WinXP login prompt took more than 10 min! Taking a look at the log, I saw these messages:

00:00:05.995355 PIIX3 ATA: LUN#2: CD-ROM passthrough cmd=0x28 sense=2 ASC=0x3a ASCQ=0x2 VERR_DEV_IO_ERROR
...
00:00:14.857562 PIIX3 ATA: LUN#2: CD-ROM passthrough cmd=0x5a sense=5 ASC=0x24 ASCQ=0x0 VERR_DEV_IO_ERROR

followed by a barrage of messages that keep repeating for about 10 minutes:

00:00:43.913699 PIIX3 ATA: Ctl#1: RESET, DevSel=0 AIOIf=0 CmdIf0=0xa0 (3996390 usec ago) CmdIf1=0x00 (-1 usec ago)
00:00:43.913767 PIIX3 ATA: Ctl#1: finished processing RESET
00:00:43.913812 PIIX3 ATA: LUN#2: performing device RESET
...
00:10:19.913857 PIIX3 ATA: Ctl#1: RESET, DevSel=0 AIOIf=0 CmdIf0=0xa0 (3997062 usec ago) CmdIf1=0x00 (-1 usec ago)
00:10:19.913925 PIIX3 ATA: Ctl#1: finished processing RESET
00:10:19.913965 PIIX3 ATA: LUN#2: performing device RESET

This happens with two of my guests, a WinXP and a WinNT4. Does not happen with W2K, Win7, Win8, Win10. It does not happen with OSX or Linux guests. Just these two VMs.

Oh, I almost forgot. I went back several versions of VBox and I saw it happening all the way to 4.3(.0). It does not happen with 4.2.26. I didn't try any earlier versions. I'll keep on testing, including the remaining of my VMs (about 20) as well as different versions of VBox.

Attaching the logs from WinXP, one with pass-through enabled and one with it disabled. Anyone else has seen this?

I can't replicate that here on a Windows host :-

At work with VBox 4.3.12, selecting host CD/DVD drive with no disk. XP Pro 32bit guest and host. Startup very quick with passthrough disabled, only a few seconds longer with passthrough. I guess this might be an OS X host issue, since we've had several CD drive weirdnesses on that host before (e.g. host drives not showing up at all in the list).

Did you raise a ticket for this?

mpack wrote:Did you raise a ticket for this?

Not yet. Still on the gathering information phase, and mainly to see if anyone else has observed something like that. The weird thing is that I haven't found a common factor that differentiates the failing VMs from the non-failing ones. Working on it...

OK, an update on the pass-through issue. More diagnostics and a clearer picture emerges.

• There are problems with all Windows guests. The symptoms are different. In WinXP and WinNT4, the login process was severely delayed. In the rest (Win98, W2K, Win7, Win8.1, Win10) either the CD simply ... vanished (from the hardware pool I mean), or the VM got stuck (Win98). The CD showed up in the device manager, but not in the disk management or in the Windows Explorer. If it did show in WinExplorer, it showed as empty and when trying to access it it complained the device was missing (W2K).
• The problem exists only in the 4.3.x builds. It does not happen in the 4.2.x builds.
• The problem does not exist in other types of guests, i.e. OSX or Linux. With 4.2.x or 4.3.x builds.
• The problem exists independent of the Guest Additions or the Extension Pack being installed.
• The problem exists whether there is an actual CD in the host or if the CD drive is empty.

I'm going to wait for a day or two just to see if anyone else can confirm/deny this, and then file a bug report, because I strongly believe this to be a 4.3.x regression. It is simply unfortunate that I didn't catch this earlier and I had to wait until 4.3.25 to observe it...

An important piece of information is missing here -- what storage controller do the respective guests have configured? Does IDE/SATA/SCSI have the same problem?

I was in the middle of testing this, when you asked the question. Here are my findings (and to recap):

• IDE does not work on Windows clients. Works on Linux and OSX clients.
• SATA works. Both in Windows7 and Mint17. Didn't try other guests, but I expect it to have similar results. OSX uses SATA as their default, so that works too.
• SCSI LsiLogic does not work. Both in Windows7 and Mint17.
• SCSI BusLogic does not work. Both in Windows7 and Mint17 (actually I couldn't find a driver for BusLogic on Linux).

BTW, the CD that I'm testing this with is a simple data CD with a couple of pictures on it, not a game or bootable or funky filesystem. Pure ISO 9660.

socratis wrote:SCSI BusLogic does not work. Both in Windows7 and Mint17 (actually I couldn't find a driver for BusLogic on Linux).

You have a BusLogic driver for Windows 7? I don't... but have one for Linux Is what you wrote really right? If so, I'd like to know more.

Anyway, the reason I was asking is that ATA/AHCI/SCSI all have different passthrough implementations, so it does matter which is used in a VM.

michaln wrote:You have a BusLogic driver for Windows 7?

Actually, the "competition" has one ( http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp ) and it simply works Where did you get your BusLogic for Linux driver from?

michaln wrote:ATA/AHCI/SCSI all have different passthrough implementations, so it does matter which is used in a VM.

Yes, I kind of discovered that with trial and error. My main beef is that IDE pass-through was working for the 4.2.x series in Windows guests and it doesn't work for the 4.3.x series. Still need to test with the newly released 4.3.26, but I don't think it will work, since AFAIK no one has mentioned it so far.

Edit: It does not work with 4.3.26 either.

socratis wrote:

michaln wrote:You have a BusLogic driver for Windows 7?

Actually, the "competition" has one ( http://download3.vmware.com/software/vmscsi-1.2.0.4.flp ) and it simply works

Ah. To be honest I never thought of trying that Good to know that it works...

Where did you get your BusLogic for Linux driver from?

It is (was?) part of the Linux kernel. Let's see... it's still there in Ubuntu 14.04.1.

Edit: It does not work with 4.3.26 either.

No surprise, no one touched this.

michaln wrote:It is (was?) part of the Linux kernel. Let's see... it's still there in Ubuntu 14.04.1.

Correction. It's there in 32-bit Ubuntu 14.04.1. Not in the 64-bit version. Don't ask me why.

64-bit Ubuntu 10.04 has the BusLogic driver, 64-bit 12.04 does not. 32-bit versions all have it.

michaln wrote:

michaln wrote:Correction. It's there in 32-bit Ubuntu 14.04.1. Not in the 64-bit version. Don't ask me why.

Why?

Sorry, I just had to.

michaln wrote:An important piece of information is missing here -- what storage controller do the respective guests have configured? Does IDE/SATA/SCSI have the same problem?

My tests outlined above are with an IDE controller, and as mentioned work fine with 4.3.12 on an XP host.

The XP VM in question has no SATA controller included in the VM recipe. It might be interesting to know if Socrates' does. I.e. might it be a confusion over controllers dating from the time when support for CD/DVD on SATA was added.